Former Baseball Coach In Small Oregon Town Pleads Guilty to Child Porn ChargesIs facing 30 years in prison April 11, 2018

Chronicle Staff

(MEDFORD, ORE) – On Monday of this week Sean Jeffrey Haga, 32, of Bandon, Oregon a former high school track and baseball coach, pleaded guilty to one count of child sexual exploitation, according to a statement issued by the US Attorney’s Office, District of Oregon.

Bandon is a small community of around 3,000 people in Coos County, located on the south side of the Coquille River. At sentencing Haga faces a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison, a $250,000 fine and a five-year term of supervised release. He is also subject to a 15-year mandatory minimum prison sentence. Haga will be sentenced on July 19th before U.S. District Court Judge Anne L. Aiken.

The US Attorney's Office statement said on June 17, 2016, “Haga shared child pornography online using Kik Messenger with an undercover FBI task force officer. Haga told the undercover officer that he wanted to travel to have sex with the officer’s minor daughter and that he possessed photos of himself sexually abusing a minor victim. Haga sent multiple pictures depicting the abuse to the undercover officer.”

Kik Messenger, commonly called just Kik, is a freeware instant messaging mobile app from the Canadian company Kik Interactive. It is used on iOS and Android operating systems, employing a smartphone's data plan or Wi-Fi to transmit and receive messages, photos, videos and other content after users register a username. According to Wikipedia, Kik is known for its features “preserving users' anonymity, such as allowing users to register without providing a telephone number.”

Kik Messenger is somewhat controversial due to its reported involvement in a number of incidents of child exploitation. “The app has been criticized as unsafe for minors due to its anonymity features and allegedly weak parental control mechanisms,” according to Wikipedia.

On that June 17th that Haga shared the pornography online with an undercover FBI agent, The FBI worked through the night to identify the person associated with the online user ID, the location from which it was being used and the identity of the resident at that location.

Based on the information collected, FBI agents in the Medford Resident Agency were able to obtain search and arrests warrants. Haga was arrested on June 18, 2016 without incident.

The US Attorney’s office says Haga was formerly employed as an educational assistant, track coach and basketball coach in the Bandon School District in Coos country.

This case was investigated by the FBI and prosecuted by Amy Potter, Assistant U.S. Attorney for the District of Oregon